1. Find an interesting existing Alt+Ctrl Interface
From the DGC alt.ctrl Archive I found a game called Guilty Smells. The video/trailer for the game can be found here:
In the game you play as a police dog on an alternate world where ‘unamerican foods’ are illegal. You walk around as the dog and sniff people for strange smells. The physical game includes a scent diffuser that the player uses to sniff in the game.
I chose this because I haven’t seen very many games or other tools/toys etc. utilizing a scent diffuser. I think smell is under utilized as an interaction tool, probably mostly for accessibility reasons. But I think this stood out to me because I haven’t seen smell being used often for interaction.
2. Come up with a concept for your own Alt+Ctrl Interface
I came up with two ideas for this prompt. The first is an original idea and the second is an alternative controller idea for a pre-existing game. I wrote about them both below.
First idea:
The sensor I picked is the SparkFun’s Pulsed Coherent Radar Sensor. It stood out to me because it can detect presence through walls and surfaces.
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/24540
This sensor can detect presence, distance, movement speed and gestures. Though the most detailed information I could find was about the presence, distance and speed detection. The data given for both presence and distance is a distance measurement in millimeters. The advanced data from the presence detection also gives intra- and inter-presence scores. High intra scores indicate fast movement and inter indicates slow movement. The distance data indicates distance measurement and a strength score. I didn’t fully understand what the strength score indicates.
The idea I came up with for this sensor is a two person game of treasure hunting. Both players can hide an object that the sensor is attached to in a given space. Both players have some kind of output reader that indicates how close they are to the object. The aim is to find the object hidden by your opponent before they find yours. This kind of game could also work with other kinds of presence detection sensors, but I thought the radar sensors ability to ‘see through objects’ would be beneficial for something like this.
Completely different idea, with completely different sensors:
When I was ideating with the radar sensor, I remembered a specific sequence from the game Little Nightmares 2 that would be interesting to translate into a real-life game.
The sequence is the mannequin room. Your character is equipped with a flashlight in a room full of mannequins chasing you. The mannequins freeze when the light is pointed at them. Progressing through the room becomes harder as more mannequins approach you from multiple perspectives. The aim is to make it across the room before the mannequins catch you. I’ve linked a video to the sequence here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWrIFdrQn-A
I thought that this could be translated into real life with remote control cars and a flashlight. The player is given a space that they have to navigate across and a flashlight. The flashlight they are equipped with has a sensor that tracks that players position in the space. The robot cars would aim to move towards this sensor.
The cars would also be equipped with light sensors that would stop their movement when the light is pointed towards them.
Some challenges that I didn’t think through yet:
- The cars need to start at varying points in the space. They also need to start moving at different times. Maybe the cars would only start moving, when the sensor on the flashlight is within a certain range of the cars.
- This would need to be played in a relatively dark space. I’m not sure how safe that would be when there are small objects chasing you.